Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The real reason for Putin’s intelligence shake-up

(Photo: Getty)

It has been reported this week that Vladimir Putin is shifting responsibility for covert operations in Ukraine to a different intelligence agency.

The Fifth Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB) has now reportedly been usurped by ‘military intelligence’ – still widely known by its old acronym of GRU, but actually called the GU, the main directorate of the general staff. Lt Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, first deputy head of the GU, is now expected to take over Russia’s intelligence capabilities in Ukraine.

To some this is evidence of inter-agency conflict and the decline of the FSB inside the Kremlin’s walls. But it is more likely that Putin is simply digging in for a long war.

It’s fair to say that Vladimir Putin isn’t prone to introspection. He certainly doesn’t appear to be willing to acknowledge his own blunders when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine. Nor does he seem to appreciate that shuffling the bridge crew of his personal Titanic is not going to stop his foundering ship from sinking.

The message of Putin’s Victory Day on 9 May speech was, in effect, that the war would go on and that Russians should prepare themselves for more deaths and a lot more economic hardship, because he has no intention of backing down from this brutal and pointless campaign. Reports of an intelligence shake-up must be seen in this context.

Putin doesn’t seem to realise that shuffling the crew of his personal Titanic is not going to stop his foundering ship from sinking

The claim that GRU is taking over comes from the well-respected journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, and is connected to an article on the nationalist Russian TV channel Tsargrad.

There certainly have been claims that the FSB has fallen out of favour lately, with Borogan and Soldatov also reporting that one of the agency’s deputy heads, Sergei Beseda, was under arrest, although he has since been seen back in his office.

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